“What would you expect me to do?”
“What would I expect you to do?” I cried, jumping to my feet. “That is just like you. Ah! Desgenais, how all this wearies me! Do you never tire of this sort of life?”
“No,” he replied.
I was standing before an engraving of the Magdalen in the desert. Involuntarily I joined my hands.
“What are you doing?” asked Desgenais.
“If I were an artist,” I replied, “and wished to represent melancholy, I would not paint a dreamy girl with a book in her hands.”
“What is the matter with you this evening?” he asked, smiling.
“No, in truth,” I continued, “that Magdalen in tears has a spark of hope in her bosom; that pale and sickly hand on which she supports her head, is still sweet with the perfume with which she anointed the feet of her Lord. You do not understand that in that desert there are thinking people who pray. This is not melancholy.”
“It is a woman who reads,” he replied dryly.
“And a happy woman,” I continued, “with a happy book.”